Build The Relationship You WANT

I was working with a couple recently who are in the midst of dissolving a long-term relationship. At one point in the conversation, one of them said, “I’m so sad and angry that, with all these years we had together, we just couldn’t get it together…work our stuff out.” There’s many reasons why that often is the case for couples, but I’ve come to see that if you find yourself in that boat, on any level, it’s probably because you’ve been waiting for something.

This handsome Dude you see on the left recently gave me a HUGE reminder of another cost of waiting…for love, for the “right time,” for when you feel “safe” enough, etc. Let me introduce you to Michael Anthony Childress.

Mike has been a friend, a member of one of the Men’s Groups I lead, an extremely accomplished ICU/Critical Care Nurse for over 15 years, an ex-husband, a former football player, a lover of fast cars, an irreverent smart-ass, and an extremely loving Soul who constantly was trying to figure out what this Love thing was all about…’cos it seemed to him that he just couldn’t “figure that s**t out” (to quote Mike directly).

Last Monday, on the 18th, after wondering why Mike hadn’t shown up to our men’s meeting on the 14th, and after having left him several messages, I found out that Mike had died of a sudden massive heart attack 2 days previous to our meeting, at the age of 45. This wonderfully loving man had been laying on his living room floor for several days before being found. I am quite sure it wasn’t in Mike’s plans that day – especially given how hard he worked out every day for years to create a body that was in incredible shape – to be getting ready to go to the gym, and literally drop dead.

In fact, what I imagine was more on Mike’s mind was what he’d do after the workout, what he’d be doing next to find a new nursing job, how he was going to make it back from one of the hardest years of his life. Mike was like a lot of us…in the face of things going badly where they were, his first tendency was to try to out-think the circumstances…to come up with better strategies…to try/work harder at making things work out.

Yet, after the last year of hell he’d been through, he’d had a revelation that I trust and hope allowed him to leave this life happier…he learned that trying to control his life and ignore what his heart was telling him and needing was a s**tty strategy. He learned that the one thing that had been so hard for him – letting people support him and love on him – was what made the biggest difference in turning his life back in the direction of high self-love and a comeback-in-the-making that inspired me and all of us who knew him. This made it all the harder to make sense of him suddenly dying when it all was finally starting to go in the direction he longed for.

So, why am Itaking up your precious time having you read about a guy that mattered to me, but you didn’t know from Adam? Because the best way I know to honor my friend is to have his seemingly meaningless death, at such a young age, have meaning beyond what he could’ve imagined. Here’s what I suggest that meaning and value can be for you, as it surely is for me.

You often hear platitudes about making the most of each day, because you never know when it’s going to be your last. You know it’s good advice, but the mind kicks in with its arrogant belief that you’ll be the one to cheat it somehow…or, at least, that you’ll live for decades more. You may be lamenting why you can’t get a relationship to work out…or, how come you can’t seem to feel too excited or inspired with the one you have…with you, your partner, your life.

You might be trying to figure that out…andodds are, you’rewaiting for something….for the perfect partner to show up that meets every single thing on your wish list for a lover. Maybe you’re waiting until you get that next promotion, that next pay jump that will give you the extra money you need to be able to finally start creating “The Dream.” Maybe you’re waiting until you get through the next deadline to take your partner and/or your kids on that road trip where you’ll just be able to have fun and connect. Maybe, you’re waiting until your ego-mind assures you you’re absolutly guaranteed enough of being safe that you’ll finally start letting people see – and love – who you REALLY are.

I’m not saying all this to discount the importance and value of getting things done, being in action to create the life you want, etc. What I AM saying this for is to encourage you to re-look at what it’s all for…is what you’re trying to create in your life being driven by the highest priority being survival or to serve love in myriad ways? I just read a survey that says a LOT of people expect to maybe enjoy 10% of their life, and are just passing time until the end, hoping it won’t suck as bad as they fear it could. I don’t know how real that number really is, but what I know from working with so many people over the last 17 years is that it may not be THAT far off….and that breaks my heart and, hopefully, would break yours.

In my opinion, the way to avoid becoming a part of that statistic is to make love your top priority…don’t wait for love to suddenly arrive or for the “perfect” or convenient time to give love to yourself and others…hell, what would your life be like if you found a way, by hook or by crook, to love on someone even when you feel like crap? We KNOW it makes you feel better! Don’t wait until you have time, or convenience, to call the person you just thought of that you haven’t talked with in a long time…if you thought of them out of the blue, it’s because your Spirit knows you need to connect with that person for reasons you don’t know…or, even need to know.

Stop waiting for love and make it…have sex with your partner to heal separation, instead of waiting to not feel separate to get in the mood. Call people. Write someone you love a quick note telling them three things you love about them (or better yet, call them and tell them). Stop what you’re doing and just tell your kids you love them and why. Do the same for yourself.

Don’t be a statistic…be the love that you were born to be and don’t wait. Mike reminded me of that, and I’m joining you in making that the top priority that can guide me – and must – in all that I create and open to.

Can success really just be a function of The K.I.S.S. Principle (Keep It Simple Stupid, for those under 40 who may confuse it with the band)?

Success, and happiness…those two things have been on my mind for most of my adult life (and my childhood, for that matter), whichhas been the problem. They haven’t been in my heart enough.

The mass definition of success seems to have morphed into an obsessive-compulsive focus on getting more, getting bigger, getting better. “Less Is More” has become disturbingly out of fashion.

When someone asks you, “How do you define success?” are your default answers mostly professionally and financially oriented? It’s rare that the “go-to” is Spiritually or personally oriented (unless I’m talking to a devout Buddhist). Identifying yourself as bank balances and a lifestyle seems to have gone alarmingly from being a guy thing to a human thing.

Now, if I had THE answer, I’d gladly provide it. But, like most people I know, I’m feverishly exploring the questions that might best lead me (and my clients) to the inner answers that can point us all towards the wisest direction for our Spirits. What I CAN say is that it’s abundantly clear a big part of any elevated-consciousness definition of success HAS to center on the overall way life is experienced below the neck. We need to shift from Deifying the ego and the mind, and find our way back to Deifying Love.

Sounds easy, right?

After 16 years in the corporate world, my body, heart, and life all felt mostly dead and flat while my income went up. When I finally started giving my true and enlivening gifts of healing, I came alive again. Somewhere along the line, though, even THAT got co-opted by an unconscious, automatic view of success that was inextricably linked to survival…not literally surviving, but surviving in a lifestyle that allowed me to THINK I was a success instead of feeling successful.

The more money I made, the more stressed I got, followed by incessant worrying about keeping that “success.” When I realized that being financially successful could feel identical to being financially unsuccessful, it became clear that a new paradigm of success was going to be needed for me, and the Planet.

So far, near as I can tell, the key to that new paradigm…one that’s sustainable for us and all species…has to rest in, be sourced by, and devoted to love and loving. Our worthy suffering (and, boy, are people suffering in ways, and at levels, that seem unprecedented to me) is based on our no longer being able to deny how we’re disconnected from – and even fending off – the love that is right there for all of us, if we’d only kick the addiction to busy-ness, speed, and GETTING.

It’s time to shift from defining success as a life style, and re-learn how to have and BE a life – like I imaging people did before technology came along – through authentic connecting and relating.

Where to start?

Here’s a success tip for you: start each day, no matter what, getting your keister on the Earth…in your back yard, at a park, on a beach…go to the Earth before your laptop, iPad, iPhone, or CrackBerry. Feel your own heart…and start asking it, daily, what IT needs. Try focusing on really feeling your connection to those you love…you’ll immediately start feeling successful. If you don’t know how to focus on your heart and your feelings…again, get on the Earth, close your eyes, and focus on breathing…if that doesn’t work, give me a call. If it does, then listen to what your heart’s trying to tell you about what success can really look like for you.

However, that’s one of the fears that came into my mind when my heart told me I needed to write this particular article today. In the past, that fear would have been enough to stop me from writing it, and doing an article that was going to be “safer,” or one I would presume/assume you’d like better. Now, it simply can’t stop me, whether I wish it would or not. So, buckle in…this is going to be a longer article than most, but I believe taking the time to read the whole thing will serve you.

It’s time for me – and I’d suggest for ALL of us – to really get naked (not literally, except with a willing partner, of course). This is not a retro throwback to free love I’m advocating. What I’m doing today is I’m getting emotionally, mentally, and Spiritually naked. If it ends up having you not want to read this eZine anymore, that’s a risk I’m willing to take, because I feel and believe it to be so important for all of us – in some way or another – to get naked in the way I’m about to.

First, though, a little background. When I was first coaching back in 1995, the prevailing wisdom was that you never told your clients anything personal about yourself, and you didn’t reveal any of your own neurosis (at least not blatantly), because you needed to be an expert and authority on whatever you were coaching about and give the impression that you had your s**t together. After all, who would want to get coached by someone who didn’t have aforementioned guano together? Yet, over time, I’ve come to realize two things: 1) most people are dramatically suffering because of thinking and believing that in their daily lives, no matter what they do for a living; and 2) doing that “looking good and together” thing is one of the things causing so much physical, emotional, Spiritual, and environmental damage.

So, if I’m really an authority or expert on how to live and have an authentic, rich, and Spiritually led/driven relationship and life…I better not have all my s**t together, because having that kind of life means having a relationship with your baggage and wounds that takes it all out of the closet and acknowledges that they’re a part of you worth loving, honoring, and appreciating (while not letting them run your life). They’re not parts of you to kill off. And…I better be willing to be totally real and authentic, or I’m a friggin’ hypocrite. So, it’s time to come clean.

If you’re a regular reader, then you’ve seen me write in the past about some of the intricacies of navigating the terrains of your ego-mind (what I call the grandiose part of our ego that’s committed to controlling our lives, your Spirit (your heart and emotional body, if you don’t like the word Spirit), and whatever you may hold as a Higher Power or Consciousness in your life. For the last several months (most of my life, actually, but I’ve only just recently really seen it clearly), I’ve been living a war. It’s a war that all of you are living, one way or another, whether you realize it or not. One of my mentors calls it “The War Within.” It’s the war between my ego-mind, and all its innumerable distortions, and my heart/Spirit that is the clearest, most pure part of me and everyone else (in my opinion). How do you tell the difference between the two? I’ll get really transparent here about how I do, by sharing what each of mine look like.

My heart and Spirit, from the time I was a little boy, has never been anything but joyous, deep, compassionate, extremely tolerant, very empathetic (and empathic), generous, wise, playful, trusting, deeply rooted in the certainty of just about anything being possible, and love personified. That heart, as a child, sat in the body of a boy born with a cleft palate, and hare lip, who – literally – from the first day of Nursery School (yes, I’m that old) until about mid-way through my sophomore year of high school, was in some way ridiculed, teased, rejected, humiliated, and excluded. That was just at school. That was where I got to get away from a broken home with a clinically depressed, alcoholic mother (if not bi-polar), a biological father who literally abandoned me at age five never to be seen again, and – for a few years – a step-father who was an abusive drunk that terrified me (now 40 years sober and one of the loves of my life). I know I’m far from being the only person with painful, traumatic stories…but, I want you to understand that your versions of this kind of hurt, confusion, betrayal, feeling invisible…you name it…they’ve all had some kind of effect on building the constructs of your ego-mind that war with your heart/Spirit on a daily basis. They’ve all been a part of building the debilitating beliefs that you plague and sabotage you right and left…the ego-mind’s favorite tools, you could say.

As all that horrible and painful stuff was happening to me, I grew to become someone who felt horrified to ever have to speak, period…not just in front of people, but I’d get self-conscious about speaking, at all, with anyone other than my family. I had few friends all the way through high school, I tended to be housebound a lot to take care of my Mom when she couldn’t hack life (which was often), and I had no Dad from 6 to 16 that could help me get what it was about to be a boy (and, someday, a man). My need to act like an adult by age 6, combined with all the loneliness and isolation that I thought at the time was my best protection against pain left me feeling ugly, unwanted, unappealing, and that I couldn’t count on anyone or anything other than myself…period. But, I didn’t want anyone seeing any of that.

I covered all that (the beliefs, the feelings) up by being a fabulously co-dependent and seemingly indispensable caretaker of countless people (mostly in my family, originally); cheerleader for everyone other than myself; workaholic; over-achieving, make-it-all-look-good upper management corporate slave; and over-eating, 275-pound walking dead person with the great family, income, and house with two cars and two dogs. Then – as now, lately – my ego-mind would keep feeding me a steady diet of shame, doubt, fear, constant reminders of “nobody can be trusted,” endless worry about how things were going to turn out (especially financially), and rarely letting love in…from myself and those who loved me that I couldn’t believe really could. When I was drinking that Kool-Aid, I never really felt like ME.

I started healing all that, shifted my career from corporate zombiehood to life coach, then relationship coach…and I found a Spiritual Path that really worked for me. But, here’s the thing I really couldn’t grasp. Unlike a lot of people that I feel go onto some kind of Spiritual Path to try to bypass their pain and wounds into some Nirvanic constant feel-good, my path has actually required me to get that being connected with my Spirit requires me to also not shirk, run from, or deny all my remaining layers of current and old pain, my frailties, my fears…in fact, damn it, it requires me to love all those parts and aspects, along with the true nature of my loving, compassionate heart that I’ve been blessed to help so many others do.

But now, the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been. There are so many planetary, economic, metaphysical, and socio-cultural shifts happening around the world – at a pace more rapid than I’ve ever seen in my 54 years – and people (including me) are fundamentally scared s**tless, and the fear’s only getting intensified by the very distractive way of coping with it that helps create it in the first place! You may not be admitting it, or maybe even aware of it. But, I’m seeing it all around me in the way that people are struggling to hang on to material things and lifestyles that they don’t even see are keeping them more and more disconnected from themselves, from love, and from their loved ones. Making money has become more important than love. We are deifying our ego-minds, and achievements…not that achievement’s bad…but being deified above heart and Spiritual Alignment…that’ll kill ya.

So, I wanted to come clean that I’m scared too. My ego-mind for the last couple of months (not-so-coincidentally, by the way, right as I made an even more serious commitment to living a life dedicated to bringing love to as many as I can reach) has had me waking up many mornings feeling low-to-enormous levels of anxiety and fear, pre-occupation with trying to control my future (particularly with my business) and being scared to death when it seems I can’t, fearing that people are finally going to realize I don’t know a damn thing (even in the face of years of successfully helping clients get themselves truly back to themselves), and being absolutely convinced that I’m only days away from living under an overpass somewhere, even when I’m nowhere near that.

You see, your ego-mind, and mine, tells bald-faced lies, all rooted in an inaccurate sense of self-insufficiency, that defy what’s actually true (or even could be), and continually strives to keep you feeling out of control and in a sense of constant threat of some kind. That way, you’ll work harder to try to control it all, you’ll DO more, and you’ll deify DO-ing and getting – over BE-ing and allowing your Spirit (and the Divine, if you believe in such a consciousness) to guide and get you through everything – good, bad, and ugly – with flying colors.

I KNOW I’m not alone in all this. How I’ve been “fighting the War” lately, to get back to returning to my connection to who I REALLY am and have always been, has been by: 1) letting go of my attachment to not feeling pain; 2) ceasing hiding this part of myself from those I love and trust (including all of you); 3) finding and constantly doing the Spiritual practices (or for the athiests and agnostics out there, practices that connect you with love) that I KNOW work, but my mind tells me I don’t need to do; 4) getting coached from those who’ve lived this War Within longer than I consciously have; 5) building a personal team of trusted loved ones around me that I can vent to who won’t tell me what I want to hear, but what I need to hear; and 6) remembering that my (and, I assert, everyone’s) life mission isn’t much about what I do for a living, but how I will live as an Emissary of Love, no matter WHAT I’m doing…and no matter WHAT.

“Denial – a defense mechanism in which a person is faced with a fact that is too painful to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence. The subject may deny the reality of the unpleasant fact altogether (simple denial), admit the fact but deny its seriousness (minimization) or admit both the fact and seriousness but deny responsibility (transference).”

I’ve had many a stunning – and seemingly unfortunate – awareness over the years – or even in the last few weeks – of how I’ve been swimming pretty deeply in the river of denial. Like everyone else I know that has such revelations, I found myself wanting to find some sort of Spiritual meaning in it. Now, you might ask yourself, “What could possibly be Spiritual about denial?” Of course, if you ARE asking yourself that, the the problem built into the question itself is that, if you knew the answer, you couldn’t be in denial anymore, right? This is all no fun for the parts of our mind that regularly like to redeem frequent flyer miles from the Frequent Denial Program. However, in life and in relationships, that shouldn’t keep you from looking at it.

One of the key things you and I have been in denial about at one time or another is how things are going in your relationship…not so much with your romantic partner (though that’s fertile ground for massive amounts of denial), but the most important relationship in your life…the one with yourself. One of the reasons your mind likes you being in denial about THAT relationship is because it allows you to maintain an illusion that your ego’s very fond of: that there’s some place you’re going to arrive at (if you work hard enough at it) that will be that magical place where everything’s been healed, you’ve got everything figured out, your plans will now be guaranteed to come out just the way you want them to, and you now have a life ahead of you of unfettered joy and coasting.

Your ego doesn’t want you facing the possibility that what you may be going through in the way of challenges in your life is a recurrence of some pattern, some belief that you thought you’d gotten handled over the course of your 120 years of therapy you feel like you’ve done, and the 4,000 self-help books you’ve devoured in the endless pursuit of trying to fix and heal yourself. The way to confirm this is to watch how often you say in your mind, “But, I’ve done SO much work on that” when you once again repeat a behavior pattern that’s plagued you for years.

Another way to gauge how much denial may be in the driver’s seat in your life is to see if you can track how hard you’re working to keep yourself distracted from your feelings and/or those of your Partner….and when you can’t distract yourself any longer, you’re often feeling resentment about how others are treating you, rather than take a realistic look at how you’re treating yourself.

If this is all hitting home for you in some way, then you may want to look at the great blessing, that’s bigger than you could imagine, of popping the denial bubbles. As painful as it can be to come out of denial about anything, if you have the courage to go the distance with it, you have virtually unlimited potential for freedom and growth in every part of your life.

When it comes to relationship, if you can develop the habit of seeing EVERYTHING as it ACTUALLY is, with an open heart, then anything’s possible and anything can be shifted.

If you add to that the skill of taking 100% responsibility for everything that’s happening in your life (“Now, THAT one’s REALLY irritating” your ego is probably saying right now), you can bring so much more of yourself, your compassion, and your love to every relationship and begin healing the one with yourself more easily. It’s hard to do that when you’re constantly looking at a Hall of Mirrors in between your ears.

In case you want to take this on as a practice for yourself, here’s a few common ways of interacting with life that indicate you may be in some pretty hefty denial:

Whenever you’re catching yourself in any of those kinds of thoughts, and want to start enacting a “Get Real” approach that allows you to get realigned with the flow that your Spirit has in mind for you, try doing something as simple as noticing how long it’s been since you told your partner how much you love them and why; hug your children (because you really want to, rather than because you should); or let yourself consciously get moved to tears by someone else’s good fortune and love…and then, cry at your own good fortune to be loved by someone.

Doing any of those types of things that you’ve had in the deep freeze for awhile, and you will find yourself no longer going down the river of De-Nile without a paddle.

It's nice to truly begin this new blog, and though I stated in my first blog here that I would begin with Billy Elliot, I saw a movie last night that inspired me to start out with it instead. The name of the film is The Answer Man, starring Jeff Daniels, Lauren Graham, and Lou Taylor Pucci (a Johnny Depp look-a-like who was excellent in the film).

I believe that what inspired me to want to share about this film is how much I was able to relate my own life to it, which is – after all – the whole point of this blog…how to use different films to assist you in your transformative explorations. I am a life coach, specializing in transformation, spiritual mentoring, relationships reinvention, and life transitions. In addition, I also do Counseling with people. While I have not yet achieved the profile of someone like Neale Donald Walsch, the author of all the Conversations With God books (and the person that Jeff Daniels' character, Arlen Faber, seems to be modeled after), I am nevertheless paid to both provide answers to my clients and, more importantly, assist them in finding their own answers that they all have inside them. When one is in that kind of position, and actually emphasizes the coaching/counseling experience as a deliberate and deliberative spiritual pathway, as I do, it's pretty interesting the kinds of projections that get put onto the coach.

Much like therapy, there is transference that happens that, in one way, makes the person who's doing the coaching or counseling invisible, or "disappeared." Now, in my opinion, that's supposed to happen and aids the effectiveness of the work. But, what happens when the provider, or healer, loses themself in the process as well. What happens when you're seen as some sort of spiritual teacher that then is projected upon to be an infallible person that wouldn't, couldn't and even shouldn't make mistakes or be human? Even worse, what if you're teaching or coaching someone in the midst of your own crisis of faith? How does one navigate the subtle (and not-so-subtle) minefields of the dance between ego and Spirit while being a public "authority?" This is exactly what The Answer Man deals with and brought up for me.

In the film, Arlen Faber, in 1988, publishes an enormous best-seller, "Me and God." Much as with Neale Donald Walsch, Faber becomes world-renowned, wealthy, spin-off books abound, and he is relegated by the masses to the role of Spiritual Guru. Because his book purported to be conversations between him and God, the public believes that he has all the answers they need to their questions. Twenty years later, when the film starts, he has become an isolated, JD Salinger-type misanthrope, desperately trying to re-connect with God…and himself. In addition, those who finally figure out who he really is come unglued when they discover that he is every bit as flawed as they are.

Taking it out of the realm, for a minute, of my particular profession, isn't this an issue we're always dealing with and have been dealing with since our childhoods? The disparity between who we naturally are, and the gyrations we end up going through to try and fit in (and deal) with others' pictures and expectations of who we are or should be? When we were children, it was natural to be natural! Most of us have grown into adults now trying to transcend all the adaptive, distorted, reactive behavior patterns that dealing with our families of origin required us to take on to be able to get our needs met. When we have had to do that long enough, we often forget who the "Real Us" really is and how that "us" really feels. The film beautifully showcases the cost of that amnesia, aggravated by the projected expectations that come part and parcel with being a teacher or healer.

If we're not present and as conscious as can be, it gets so easy to get lost in the hall of mirrors of our ego-mind that constantly supports the belief in the illusions, and delusions, of our ego-mind's grandiosity and the drive to unconsciously believe that our "truth" is really defined by others' reactions,feedback, and/or love. This is one of the most insidious forms of separation that afflicts us as humans, and from that place, we look for people – therapists, gurus, coaches, teachers, authors, Oprah – to give us the answers on how to circumvent that and get back to being happy (often mistaken for non-stop feeling good, rather than living our Spirit). When the Answer Man/Woman doesn't have the answers, or – in my trade – offers answers and reflections that we want to be heard, the messenger (and the message itself) often get killed off one way or the other, and then the search continues for the next Answer Man/Woman.

When you're the one looked to to be that Answer Man/Woman, it can get easy to forget that your strength as a teacher/healer/coach is to bring your human-ness to the party. The minute you forget, as a healer/teacher, that you're just as human and fallible as everyone else, and forget to bring loving compassion to that reality and how you work it out for yourself, you're trapped in that hall of mirrors (as the Arlen Faber character in the film is) looking for a way out. I often find myself in this position, due to the wounds I still carry that I continually work on, of getting to learn this lesson over and over. Every time, as in the movie, one of the key "solutions" or paths out of the trap always comes back to one common denominator: connection, to oneSelf, our Spirit, and to the Divine.

To see this played out in a way that is well-written and more realistic than most films, see The Answer Man. See how it reflects YOUR process of dealing with image, expectations, desires, fear, love, separation, and ego/Spirit dualities. Notice if it shows you anything about what you do, or where you go inside, when you don't have The Answers. Then, please come back to this Post and add your comments. The film is in theaters now (in some cities) and available On Demand for Comcast subscribers.